


la vie en rose

by thekardemomme



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Music, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13072389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekardemomme/pseuds/thekardemomme
Summary: Eva’s mum says that Eva’s always yearned for something more. That she’s always looked towards horizons as if she could see over them, as if she could reach over and cup all of the wonders of the world in her hands like liquid gold, could see the things that no one else could. Eva wishes she could, but she can’t.Noora Amalie Sætre, however, can. Eva’s absolutely sure of it.





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelordvoldemort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelordvoldemort/gifts).



> merry christmas to alyssa from your secret santa! i hope you have an amazing holiday and i really really hope you like this fic!!

Music’s been illegal for as long as Eva can remember, and for as long as Eva’s parents can remember. Probably for even longer than that. Eva’s not really sure why. So many stories and tales have been twisted over the years, passed on through generations like a keepsake, changed around to fit narratives and please biases. No one really knows the truth anymore. It’s not in history books and there’s no one alive that would remember what truly happened. Or, if there is, they never speak of it.

Nobody’s ever really been concerned about it. It’s hard to miss something you were never introduced to, that’s what Eva’s mum always says. You can’t lose something that was never yours to begin with. It didn’t fall from Eva’s fingers like grains of sand, it didn’t blow away in the wind. It was never there, it was never an option for her to reach out and touch it. All logic suggests that Eva shouldn’t care about music, because she doesn’t know what music is.

Eva’s always wanted to hear music. She wants to hear the sound of a violin, of a drum. She wants to dance and sing along to melodies that wrap themselves around her eardrums, she wants to buy a CD and play it on repeat so many times that she knows the lyrics by heart, she wants to tap her toes along to a rhythm until her heartbeat matches it. She wants to know what music sounds like. She wants to know what was so bad, what caused so much chaos, that the president chose to outlaw it forever, to place a bounty over the heads of those who dared to do so much as hum a simple tune.

Eva’s mum says that Eva’s always yearned for something more. That she’s always looked towards horizons as if she could see over them, as if she could reach over and cup all of the wonders of the world in her hands like liquid gold, could see the things that no one else could. Eva wishes she could, but she can’t.

Noora Amalie Sætre, however, can. Eva’s absolutely sure of it.

Noora’s a tall blonde girl that sits in the back of Eva’s history class. She regularly gets reprimanded for tapping her pencil on the edge of the desk, and once, she’d whistled. It wasn’t to any tune, didn’t have any wavering sounds that could be mistaken for song, but she’d gotten days of detentions for it. Eva had been enamored with Noora from that day forward, and she’d discovered that Noora holds the seven wonders of the world just beyond her pupils.

“Still pining after her?” A voice asks, breaking through Eva’s reverie. She’d been staring at Noora, at the way the younger girl’s jeans sat deliciously on her hips, made her body look good enough to make Eva squirm. Eva turns to Sana, a light blush on her cheeks. “I don’t understand why you can’t just go speak to her. She won’t bite.”

Eva gazes after Noora again, watches as she laughs at whatever the girl next to her is saying. “I wish it were that easy. Just look at her, she’s so pretty I could cry. She’s practically untouchable. Way out of my league.” She pouts, facing Sana again. “I think she’d be a lot easier to get over if she were straight. Why’d you ever have to point out her lesbian pride pin? I would’ve lived in peace if I hadn’t known she was gay!”

Sana scoffs, “Don’t lie to yourself. You were half in love with Noora for weeks before I pointed out her pin.”

“She looks like what I think music sounds like.”

“What if music turns out to be the worst thing you’ve ever heard in your life?”

“It won’t,” Eva says immediately. “They wouldn’t have outlawed it if it wasn’t any good, now would they?”

“Murder is against the law. Are you suggesting that murder is against the law because it’s a good thing?”

“That’s not even a valid comparison!” Eva protests, leaning back against the picnic table they’re sitting at. “Music has been used for so many things in history, Sana. People used to sing songs to ask God for rain or for sun. They sang songs to express their emotions and forget about things for a little while. To be happy.”

Sana shrugs. “I’m pretty sure murderers could use those exact excuses for why they murder people, but sure. I get what you’re saying.” She leans back, too, finally looking over at Noora. Eva’s breath goes away every time she glances up at Noora, at the enigma that she is. “You have good taste, I’ll give you that. She’s definitely one of the prettiest girls in school.”

“I called dibs,” Eva says, as if that’s necessary. Sana—though she’d never word it quite like this, for fear of being to sappy—is head over heels for her boyfriend, Yousef. She wouldn’t leave him for anyone, not even the prettiest girl in school. “God, she’s so beautiful. It should be illegal to be _that_ beautiful and not be my girlfriend.”

“Eva. Talk to her.”

Eva turns to face Sana, dramatically leaning against the table in despair. The Disney princesses do it, so can she. “How, Sana? What would I even say to her that wouldn’t make me sound like a total idiot?” She pushes her lip out in a pout, watching the fond smile that it brings to Sana’s face. “You have to teach me how to flirt. You’re the first one of us to have a boyfriend.”

Sana rolls her eyes. “You can’t learn how to flirt. Everyone responds to different things. Some people like cheesy pickup lines, some people like overconfidence, some people liked to be talked to about fucking existentialism. It’s different for everyone.” She nudges Eva’s shoulder. “You can, however, come over later. Yousef’s going to Even’s with Elias and the boys, so I’ll be alone all night and probably tomorrow. We can have a sleepover.”

“Sure, that sounds fun. Are you inviting anyone else?”

“Vilde and Chris,” Sana nods.

“Cool.” Eva sits up and pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head, grabbing her bag. “Well, class starts in five minutes, so I better get going. I’ll see you this afternoon. That is, if Noora doesn’t kill me in history.” She waves to Sana and then walks off, heading for her first class of the day.

Noora only shares the one class of Eva’s, which is both a blessing and a curse. As much as Eva would love to spend all day staring at her, she imagines it’d be detrimental to her grades to have a distraction of that magnitude in class with her. It’s a lot harder to pay attention to boring lectures when there’s a pretty girl sitting near you. Especially when that girl loves history and is constantly speaking out in class, giving her opinions and sharing little anecdotes. Eva loves her voice so much that she daydreams about it, trying to imagine what her singing voice would sound like.

She knows it’s not accurate, because she’s never heard anyone sing, much less Noora. But if it’s anything half as beautiful as the voice Eva imagines, Eva’s more fucked than she thinks.

  
♡♡♡

  
The streets are surprisingly quiet during Eva’s trek to Sana’s. There’s very few passersby, and those that are there barely pay any attention to the world around them, too engrossed in the newspapers they’re holding. Eva wonders what’s in the news today. Threats of war again, like last week? More propaganda about the unnecessary evil that is freedom of the press? Advertisements for conversion therapy an article published just last month, one that Eva had clipped out and pasted on the wall in her room. She’s making a collage of these shitty types of articles so she can paint them rainbow. Eva’s bi, but the rainbow will be her symbol of the community as a whole. She already has most of the paint, anyway.

She checks the time on her watch, wondering if it’s closer to curfew than she’d thought it was. Her watch reads 19:32. Curfew isn’t for another hour and a half. She shrugs and keeps walking, the lonely sound of her shoes on pavement filling the still air. It feels like the sort of night in which something might happen. Something bad, maybe. Whatever it is, she isn’t all too sure about the way it makes her stomach twist.

Her knuckles hit Sana’s door four times, and it’s opened a handful of seconds later. Vilde’s smiling and holding a glass of wine, which makes Eva’s eyes widen. She practically shoves Vilde back into the house, stumbling in and sealing the door firmly shut. She twists both locks and checks out the peephole. What a wonderful night it is for no one to be around, after all.

“Vilde!” She hisses, hands on her hips. “What do you think you’re doing, answering the door with wine in your hand?! Do you have a death wish?!”

“Death?” Vilde squeaks.

Eva huffs. “Okay, that was an exaggeration, but still. Who knows what would happen if someone saw you with that glass and reported it. You could get in a lot of trouble! You could get Sana in a lot of trouble.” She looks at the glass, clutched in Vilde’s trembling hand. “Anything you do illegally, you have to do behind closed doors. Closed and locked. It’s for your own safety.”

“Eva!” She hears, and she spins around to see Chris standing there, a wide smile on her face. Eva forces herself to relax, to let the tension bleed out of her shoulders. She hurries across the room to throw her arms around Chris, hugging her tightly. “It’s so nice to see you, I feel like it’s been forever.”

“I know,” Eva agrees, sighing heavily. “It has been too long. Just know that you’re always welcome to come over, okay?”

“You, too,” Chris promises. They pull away, and Eva thinks she sees some tears in Chris’s eyes.

Sana joins them in the living room, holding out a glass of wine to Eva. Eva hesitates before accepting it; she has to remind herself that the door is closed and locked, the windows are drawn closed, and no one is around to see them. Not everything done in the dark will be brought to the light, no matter what the propaganda says.

It’s white wine. Crisp and clean and tastes a bit like apples. Eva’s always been partial towards sweet red wine and the way it stains her lips, and the way it loosens her limbs and makes her feel a lot lighter in a world that’s using all its weight to push her down. The white wine soothes her aches, though, so she drinks a little bit more.

They all gather around the living room, spread out on the couches. There’s a television on the wall but the only channels available are the news channel and the pro-president films. It’s just more brainwashing. They don’t turn it on. And, judging by the dust on the top, Eva suspects that Sana’s family hasn’t turned it on in a long time. Eva understands. She hasn’t watched television since the election of the newest president. (It’s really more of a monarchy than a democracy. The votes don’t mean anything and the male descendants of the previous president always win. It’s a dynasty more than anything. Nothing ever changes.)

“Where’s Elias?” Chris asks, after a while of talking about school and work and family. “I know you said he was at Even’s, but it’s getting really close to curfew. Is he staying there?”

“I think so,” Sana nods.

“Wait, Elias is with Even?” Vilde asks, and Sana nods again. “Oh. He’s with Magnus, then. They went to the skate park. Magnus, Mahdi, Jonas, and Isak went with Even and his friends. That’s what Magnus said. Do you think they’re still there?” She looks at the time on a bright clock on the wall. It’s shaped like a sun. “It’s thirty five minutes to curfew.”

Chris chews on her lip. “We should go check. The skate park isn’t that far from here, right, Sana? We could walk.”

“If we sneak through the dark,” Eva tacks on, and everyone turns to look at her. “It’s not safe for us to walk alone, even though we have numbers. We’ll have to sneak through the bushes and underneath the fence.”

Sana stands. “Let’s go, then. I’m not letting my dumbass brother get hurt just so he can skate with his fellow dumbasses.” Vilde starts to protest that Magnus isn’t a dumbass, but Sana just cuts her off. “Come on, ladies. We’ve got men to go and save.”

“Someone write a novel! A group of heroines save the group of idiotic men!” Chris chimes out, and all four girls laugh as they set down their wine glasses (minus Sana) and head for Sana’s back door.

Everyone goes quiet as they head out into the night. The grass tickles Eva’s ankles as they tiptoe their way to the shrubbery. At one point, Vilde’s hand finds hers. Eva squeezes it, keeps their palms pressed together. They duck under the chain link fence at the edge of Sana’s property and then start running the way they know the skate park is. It’s just far enough away that they can’t quite make out the light from it, but it won’t take long before the ground beneath them is illuminated. Until then, they just run, watching out for trees.

The skate park is unsurprisingly pretty empty, save for the group of idiotic boys in the corner bowl. All four girls roll their eyes as they spot them, and then fold their arms over their chests as they make their way towards them.

Magnus lights up upon seeing his girl approaching, hurrying over to greet Vilde. Yousef gives a shy smile when he sees Sana standing there—knowing he’s caught in a place he shouldn’t be. Sana just walks over and gives him a disapproving glance before letting him hug her. Eva supposes she’s just happy that they’re safe.

“Eva!” Isak cheers, smiling as Eva approaches him where he’s sitting on the bench. He’s half draped over Even’s lap, their hands intertwined. “Even, this girl right here is one of the best skateboarders I’ve ever met. You’d be hard pressed to guess it, but it’s true. You should see her shredding.”

Even gives her an impressed look. “You’re right, baby, I never would’ve guessed it. It’s impressive, though.” He taps Isak’s thigh, and Isak looks back. “Is she better than you, though?”

Isak sighs, and Eva scoffs. She knows she’s better than Isak, always has been. Isak only skateboarded to impress Jonas, everyone knows that. “I don’t know, I think I’m probably better. Only because I’m out here, like, every night, and the last time Eva skateboarded was a few months ago.“

“Give me your skateboard,” Eva says suddenly, extending her hand towards Even. Isak raises his eyebrows, asks if she’s serious; but he’s smiling. “Come on. Let me show Even what I’ve got, since he’s doubting my skills.”

Even laughs and hands over his skateboard. There’s stickers all over the underside, and a sticker of a marijuana leaf on the top. Eva drops it on the ground and steps on, skating to the edge of the bowl. She steps off and lifts it, getting ready to drop in. She swallows her nerves and drops, skating into the bowl.

Despite not skateboarding in quite some time, she can still manage quite a few of the tricks that Jonas taught her. She can hear all of her friends cheering her on, and it makes her feel like she’s actually flying. She smiles and laughs and jumps and shreds, and then decides to attempt a move she hasn’t done in at least a year.

It ends with her on her ass. No surprise there.

“Eva!” Vilde shrieks, but Eva can’t move. She’d hit her head pretty hard and she can’t really hear much over the rushing in her ears. She tries to sit up but there’s a hand on her shoulder, keeping her laying down on the bottom. She tries to open her eyes, and manages after a few moments. She expects to see Isak standing there, or maybe Sana, but instead she’s met with Even.

Eva groans, squinting her eyes and trying to focus on Even’s face. “Be careful,” Even is saying, his voice gentle and soft. “You hit your head and you’re bleeding a little bit. Don’t freak out, it’s just a surface wound. Just a little scrape, you’ll be fine. I’m just worried you have a concussion.” He grabs his phone and turns on the flashlight, checking Eva’s eyes with it. “Okay... I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think you have a concussion. I’m gonna sit you up, okay? If you feel nauseous, that’s normal, just turn the other way if you have to vomit.” He’s smiling, so Eva figures that last part was a joke—but when Even sits her up, she does gag a little. “It’s okay, Eva, just let it out. There’s no shame in it.”

“No shame?” Eva slurs, raising a hand to her head. “I just busted my ass in front of everyone. And I used to be able to do that.”

“It was a great trick, you almost nailed it. You just messed up a little on the landing, that’s all. You just undershot it a little,” Even murmurs, and then turns back to the group that’s watching from the top. “Does someone have a rag I can use to wipe the blood from her head? I don’t want it to get in her eye.” Eva watches Vilde toss down her bandana/headband, which Even then presses to her temple. “I’m gonna take you to Isak’s with us, alright? Isak’s roommate is good with this shit. Curfew’s in ten minutes so we’ll have to be quick.” He grabs Eva’s hand and hauls her to her feet.

In the end, Even has to enlist the help of Jonas and Magnus just to get Eva out of the bowl. It takes Isak and Even holding her up to walk Eva to Isak’s before curfew.

“Is Eskild home?” Even asks as he holds his hand out for Isak’s keys. Eva leans her weight on Isak as Even unlocks the door. Her knees feel like jelly and her head feels heavier than normal.

Isak shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” He turns to Eva, wrapping an arm securely around her waist. “Are you okay, Eva?” He asks. Eva can see the concern in his eyes, so she nods.

“Yeah,” Eva murmurs, “just a little..shaken, I guess.”

“She hit her head pretty hard, Isak. I hope you don’t expect her to be running around in circles. Okay, come on, put her on the couch while I go get Noora.”

Isak leads her to a couch that’s really too small to be called that. She sits down and tips her head back, groaning a little bit. “I feel like I’m hungover or something,” Eva complains. It makes Isak laugh, which in turn makes Eva feel 500% better. She hates that he’s so worried about her.

“Maybe we should take her to the doctor?” Isak calls after Even, and Eva shakes her head, resting her hand on his arm.

“No, no, I’m okay,” Eva insists. “Just a little shaken, seriously. I wasn’t expecting to eat shit like that and it just startled me, is all.”

Just then, Even returns to the room with none other than Noora Amalie Sætre. Eva fights the urge to let her jaw drop as Noora crosses the room, smiling at Eva.

“Hey, Eva,” she greets, and Eva turns red with embarrassment. Of course her first real interaction with Noora would be in these circumstances. “Even told me you took a pretty nasty fall, and I can see the bleeding, so I’m gonna patch it up, alright? I’m going to get a wet rag and some gauze. I’ll be right back. If you feel nauseous, throw up on Isak.”

“Hey!” Isak yells as Noora leaves the room. Eva fights the urge to watch her leave.

She turns to look over her shoulder and make sure Noora is nowhere near by, and upon that confirmation, she slaps Isak’s arm. He yelps in what’s probably more so surprise than pain, and asks her what the fuck that was for. “Why didn’t you tell me you live with Noora?!” She hisses.

Isak’s eyebrows furrow. “Huh?”

Eva rolls her eyes, leaning in closer. “You heard me. Why the hell didn’t you tell me that you live with Noora? You know I’ve had a crush on her since the beginning of the year when we met in history class! Don’t you think it would’ve been nice to know?!” She snaps, her voice hushed. She can only imagine how embarrassing it would be for Noora to overhear this conversation.

“Oh!” Isak says, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Shit, sorry, Eva. But I just moved in, like, a couple of months ago. You know that. And it’s not like you and I actively talk about what girls you’re into.”

“Yeah, because you’re too busy with Even,” Eva mumbles. She doesn’t mean it, not really. She knows how it is. That when friends get significant others they dedicate a lot of time to the relationship, especially in the first few months. She understands, she really does. But that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.

Still, Isak frowns, and opens his mouth to say something. But then Noora is walking back in with a wet cloth and gauze in one hand and an ice pack in the other. She smiles as she sits down next to Eva, instantly reaching out to brush Eva’s hair away from the scrape on her head. Eva hisses a little at the contact, and Noora gives her an apologetic look.

“This might hurt a bit,” Noora says, and yeah, Eva figured that much out on her own. “The blood has dried your hair to the cut a little, so. Plus it’s direct contact with an open wound. I’m only doing it so you don’t get an infection. Better a little pain now than a lot of pain later, right?” She presses the wet cloth back to Eva’s temple. It’s warm, though Eva can’t quite be sure if that’s on account of warm water or warm blood.

She sticks some gauze to Eva’s temple once the wound is clean, and then hands over the ice pack. Noora says it’s for the swelling, but it works wonders for the pain too.

Even pats Eva’s knee. “It’s getting pretty late, maybe we should get her to bed.”

“Yeah, it might help if she sleeps it off,” Noora agrees.

“Um, hello?” Eva teases. “ _She’s_ right here, and she can think for herself.”

“Are you sure? That fall must’ve rattled your brain quite a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were unable to string together a single coherent thought. Or, wait,” Noora grins mischievously, “you were already unable to do that.”

Eva gapes. “Excuse me!”

“I’ve heard you try and speak in history class, always stuttering and stumbling over your words. Don’t worry, it’s cute.” Noora smiles and Eva blushes and Isak, well. Isak not-so-subtly pinches Eva’s ribs. Eva not-so-subtly elbows him in the crotch because honestly, does he have no concept of how to hide a crush?

She thinks back to how he was when he was crushing on Even and realizes that no, no he doesn’t. Isak’s about as emotionally constipated as the president.

“Come on,” Noora says suddenly, standing up and offering Eva her hand. Eva’s heart leaps to her throat as she accepts it. (Noora’s hand is warm and dainty, as if she’s a prima ballerina.) “Let’s get you into some pajamas.”

Noora’s room is all the way at the end of the hall, and it’s absolutely nothing like Eva expected. It’s soft, and everything is cream colored and neat, and there’s a paper taped to the mirror. _Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always._

Noora opens her drawer and pulls out a pair of pink silk pajama pants and a thin white t-shirt, holding them up to Eva. “Are these okay? Or would you prefer shorts?” Eva just nods dumbly, so Noora throws them over. “Don’t worry, I’ll turn around so you can change in here. Although, if you need to go to the bathroom anyway, you’re more than welcome to change in there. It’s up to you.”

Eva shakes her head. “I’m okay right here.” She waits for Noora to turn and then she turns herself, and then changes as fast as she can. There’s a bit of a pause where she tries to decide if she should leave her bra on or not, but she decides eventually to just take it off. For the safety and health of her body, of course. Not at all for any other reasons.

When she turns back around, Noora is also turning around, now clad in pajamas as well. She’s in leggings and a tank top, only wearing a bralette beneath it, and Eva tries to take a few deep breaths and not get too overwhelmed.

No words are exchanged as they both sit on Noora’s bed, on top of the duvet and reclining against the decorative pillows.

“Did we have history homework to do this weekend?” Noora asks suddenly, breaking the silence. Eva feels oddly disappointed, but she knows she shouldn’t. Noora was only helping out her classmate. It wasn’t anything more than that. Eva would’ve done the same for anybody else.

She shakes her head a little. “No. Just the project that’s due at the end of the term, but I don’t think anyone’s actually started on that yet.”

Noora snorts, “Of course not. I don’t think our teacher realizes that we have other classes and can’t dedicate all of our time doing a project little by little, night by night, for well over three months. That piece of shit will be started and completed within the last week before it’s due.”

“I admire you,” Eva says, and Noora raises her eyebrows. “Because my project will be started and completed the _night_ before it’s due.”

The laugh that it pulls out of Noora is so beautiful that it takes Eva’s breath away. It all sounds a little cliché—like the romance books her mother used to sneak home from her travels abroad—and it makes her blush. Love isn’t like the books, no matter how much she feels like Ally looking at Noah (except the gay version, which is always better).

“That is the truest statement that’s ever been said. I admire _you_ for your unapologetic honesty.” Noora smiles again, and Eva has to focus on her breathing.

Noora moves to grab this small purple notebook off of her bookshelf, settling it in her lap. She smiles at Eva. (She never smiles this much in class. Eva can’t figure out why she’s smiling so much now.)

“I want to show you something,” Noora says mysteriously, wiggling her eyebrows at Eva before collapsing into giggles as she flips through the notebook. After a moment of searching, she turns it towards Eva for her to see what’s on the page. It’s a portrait of Eva, done in ballpoint pen—green ballpoint pen, the color Noora writes with in class. Eva’s mouth goes dry. “I drew this, like, two months ago. I always meant to show you but I never got the chance.”

“It’s amazing,” Eva says. Her voice is winded, as if she’d run a marathon before coming here, but she can’t help it. Noora had taken the time out of her day to sketch Eva, and it isn’t like a caricature or a doodle, it’s a full blown drawing of Eva’s profile. “You drew this in class? How did you even have time to do that? How did the teacher not scold you for not paying attention?”

Noora smiles again. Eva wonders if she really keeps smiling repeatedly, or if she just has a permanent smile plastered to her face. “That which the teacher doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Pros to sitting in the back of the class.”

“What, that the teacher doesn’t see you?”

“No. That I get to look at you.”

Eva’s cheeks heat up at the line, even more so when Noora laughs. “Can I... Can I see it? Like, closer?” She asks hesitantly, and Noora nods, handing over the notebook. From the better angle Eva can see all of the lines, all of the curves and edges and dots and ink strokes. It’s much like language, Eva thinks. The more and more you say a word, the more the meaning becomes disassociated with it, and the word sounds made up. With the drawing, the more Eva looks at it, the more it becomes just a jumble of lines and shading and ink smears where Noora’s hand must’ve brushed against the page. The astonishing thing is that it doesn’t make it any less beautiful.

“I have more drawings in there if you want to see them,” Noora murmurs, her voice right in Eva’s ear. Eva jumps when she feels Noora’s breath on her shoulder, and she fights to keep her composure.

She starts flipping through the pages, seeing more drawings on them. They range from ballpoint portraits to pencil doodles, and even a couple of pages that appear to be done with stamps, or maybe some sort of paint. Every page is unique, but the style and technique remains consistent throughout. All of the art is so obviously Noora, and it means something that Eva is able to identify that, considering she’d spent very limited one-on-one time with her.

When she gets towards the back of the notebook, she finds a page filled with music notes. She drops the notebook as if it’d burned her, and snaps her head to the side to face Noora. It hurts her more than she’s willing to admit, and she gets the slightest bit dizzy for a second or two, but the overwhelming anxiety (and excitement) buzzing under her skin takes precedence over all of those feelings.

This time, Noora’s the one blushing.

She snatched the notebook back from Eva, hurrying to put it back on the shelf. Eva can see the slight tremor in her fingers, as if she’s nervous. “Are those... Is that.. Do you..” Eva swallows hard, blinking a couple of times. Noora isn’t looking at her anymore. She’s hyper focused on putting the notebook meticulously. Eva sees right through that. Noora’s scared, and rightfully so. “You’re writing music,” Eva says, stating the obvious. Noora flinches, and Eva knows that it’s true. “Does anybody else know about this?”

“No,” Noora rushes to say. “No, and no one else can know. Please, Eva, please don’t tell anybody.”

“What? Noora, I would never tell anyone.”

“Promise me,” Noora insists, clambering back onto the bed and offering Eva her pinky finger. “You have to promise me that you’ll keep this between us, okay? You know what can happen if someone reports it. You have to promise me, Eva. Promise me you won’t tell.”

Eva links their pinkies without hesitation. “You have my word,” she swears, and most of the nervousness seems to leave Noora’s body. “I’m just curious. I’ve always been obsessed with music, ever since I was younger. My dad always promised me he’d sneak me home some tapes from his business trip to Denmark, but he got caught, and... It didn’t happen. So my mum never tried. I’ve never heard any music, or singing, none of it. I only knew that it was sheet music in your notebook because of history lessons,” she explains. “Do you play any instruments? Sing?”

“I dabble,” Noora admits, and then gives Eva another nervous glance. Eva just lifts her pinky finger, reminds Noora of their promise, and Noora takes a deep breath to relax again. The last thing Eva wants is for Noora to think that Eva would ever sell her out. “I write a lot of songs. I have ever since I was little. I used to live in this shit little town with my parents and they _resented_ the law. How could they support a law that no one would disclose the reasoning behind? At the very least, the government should tell us why. Even if the explanation is stupid, at least we’d have one. But we don’t, and we didn’t.

“So my dad bought tapes and radios illegally and my mum taught me to play a few instruments, and we sang every night and every Sunday morning. Hymns and classic rock and pop and acoustic. Acoustic is my favorite. Anyways, I grew up with music, so when I moved to Oslo and got away from my parents and realized that no one else dared to break the law like that... Well, it’s easy to take my tapes and CDs and records from me, but they can’t take this.” She taps her head, and Eva wonders what symphonies Noora holds in there.

“Would you play for me?” Eva blurts out. She cringes at how desperate she sounds, how hysterical and watery her voice is. She doesn’t want to cry over music, but here she is. “I’ve always wanted to hear music and— Please, would you play for me sometime?”

“I—” Noora begins, but they’re cut off by a couple of knocks on the door. Both of them fall dead silent, the air around them going still as they both remember that what they’re talking about is highly illegal and highly dangerous. For the first time in Eva’s life, the thought of doing something dangerous makes her adrenaline pump. For once, she’s not terrified of the defiance. Noora seems to have that effect.

The door opens and Isak is standing there, clad in pajamas that are slightly too big (probably Even’s), and with sopping wet hair from a shower. Noora smiles and sits up straight, as if she and Eva had been doing nothing more than casually chatting about their history quiz from two days ago. And, if Isak were to ask, that’s exactly the alibi she would use.

“Hey, I just wanted to see if Eva wanted to sleep in my room tonight. Even went home, and... I know it’s a little awkward, but since you two don’t really know each other well, I figured maybe you might be a bit more comfortable if you took time to develop your friendship before you got to sleeping in the same bed. Eva’s a cuddler,” he turns to Noora, “so I wouldn’t want you to wake up with her around you like an octopus and have a panic attack.”

Eva wants nothing more than to stay in Noora’s bed and cuddle, but she recognizes that that may be pushing her luck (and Noora’s boundaries). So she pushes herself off of the bed, thanks Noora for the pajamas, and heads for the door.

“Wait, Eva,” Noora says, grabbing something and hurrying over, discreetly slipping it into her hand. “There. I wouldn’t want you to forget that.”

“What is it?” Isak asks curiously, trying to peer into Eva’s hand.

Eva responds by clenching her fist around the paper, glaring at him. “Is it any business of yours?” She asks, and Isak just rolls his eyes.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s a tampon,” Noora lies, and Eva watches Isak roll his eyes again. “Are you satisfied, Issy? Was finding out that Eva is on her period as juicy and entertaining as you’d hoped it’d be?”

“You can’t gross me out with a natural body function, Noora, nice try.” He sticks his tongue out at her, to which Noora promptly sticks her tongue back out. Eva can’t keep the smile off of her face as she watches Noora and this silly, playful side of her that Eva’s never seen before. She realizes that she doesn’t know much about Noora at all, not like she thought she did. She likes everything she’s found out so far, though.

She closes her fingers tighter around the paper, toying with the edge. “Come on, tough guy, let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted,” Eva urges, tugging on Isak’s arm. She bids another goodnight to Noora and then follows Isak to his room. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to run to the bathroom,” she excuses herself almost immediately. Isak just nods as Eva slips out the door, note in hand.

The light in their bathroom is pretty dim (Eva supposes that the huge windows make up for it in the daylight), so she has to crowd close to the lights to read what’s on the small paper. It’s written in familiar green pen, in the same loopy handwriting that Eva’s seen scrawled on assignments and tests that she’s handed back for their teacher. Her heart skips a beat as she reads it.

  
_Meet me here Monday right after school. Don’t make any detours and get here as fast as you can, before Isak gets here. I have something to show you._

  
Eva doesn’t have to suppress her smile and excited squeal this time, so she doesn’t. She holds the note to her chest and grins and bounces excitedly on her toes like a lovesick puppy. Noora’s invited Eva out for the first time, and maybe if Eva pretends hard enough, she can trick herself into believing it’s a date. Hopefully it’s the first of many.

She tucks the note back in her pocket and then makes her way back to Isak’s room. She slides under his duvet and clicks off the lamp, trying to quell her excitement so she can sleep. Noora and Isak were probably right, sleep probably would help her head.

“Goodnight, Eva.”

Eva grins so hard she isn’t sure she can stop, not now or ever. “Goodnight, Isak.”

  
♡♡♡

  
Sana holds the note carefully, frowning as she reads it. Eva keeps anxiously looking at the clock, just waiting for the time to change so she can go to Noora’s. They’d sat next to each other in history, whispering to each other about how oblivious their teacher was, and picking out pictures of ugly people in their textbook so they could point it out to each other and say _look, it’s you!_ Needless to say, focusing wasn’t exactly in the cards for her.

“I’m not going to lie,” Sana says slowly, and Eva feels her face fall, “this seems a little bit odd. I mean, doesn’t it strike you as kind of weird that she’d be asking to meet with you alone? To show you something? How do you know that something isn’t a rubber room with soundproof walls and a drain on the floor?”

Eva scoffs, “Sana! Jesus Christ, she’s not a serial killer.” She takes the note back and folds it up tight, putting it in her pocket. “I thought you’d be happy for me, that I’m finally hanging out with her.”

“I am! I’m just careful.” Sana leans back in her seat, looking up at where their teacher is still scribbling math problems across the board. Eva watches Sana copy one down, before setting her pencil aside and sitting quietly.

Eva sighs, folding her arms across her chest and slumping back. She wishes she could tell Sana that she _knows_ it isn’t like that. She wishes she could explain that Noora was probably just going to tell her more about the music that they’d been barred from knowing about for their whole lives. But she can’t. She promised. And even if she hadn’t, she would never tell anyone and risk Noora’s safety.

“You don’t know her,” Eva mumbles.

“And you do?” Sana asks, but there’s no venom in it. Eva knows she isn’t angry, she’s just concerned. Eva knows why she’s concerned. She guesses she would be too. And she was, when Sana started seeing Yousef. Everything is dangerous these days.

So she doesn’t bite the bait, she doesn’t fight back. She just leans over her notebook and writes random math problems in it, not really paying attention to whatever the hell she was writing down. She wouldn’t be able to focus on it even if she’d wanted to.

After ten minutes of silence, the teacher wraps up the lesson. The bell rings less than a minute later, and Eva can’t pack her things fast enough. She can feel Sana’s eyes on her but she ignores it, zipping up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. She bids Sana a quick goodbye, pressing a kiss to her cheek, before darting off through the classroom door.

She takes the first tram towards Noora’s. It’s packed and she almost decides not to get on, but the risk of Isak getting there before her looms over, so she squeezes in. When she gets there, she practically runs up to the doorbell, pressing the button next to the Pride flag. She’s been to Isak’s enough that she knows which one it is. She, apparently, hasn’t been to Isak’s enough to know about his hot roommate.

Someone buzzes her up, and Eva hopes against hope that it’s just Noora and not Isak or Eskild or Linn. She takes the stairs two at a time, ignoring the burning in her thighs until she reaches the top. The door opens before she can even knock on it, revealing just the girl Eva had run over here to see.

And god, Noora looks more beautiful close up than she does from afar in class. Eva can’t help but notice it again. The soft sweep of her eyelashes against her cheekbones, the buttery red lipstick smoothed over her lips, the contrast of her blonde hair against her cheeks (and the way it lightly brushes against the top of her shirt—she’s wearing a sea green turtleneck today, and Eva thinks she might be drooling over Noora). She wants to lean forward and press her lips to Eva, say a fuck all to the lipstick (she wouldn’t mind the smears), but somehow she restrains herself.

Noora locks the door behind her, and then gives Eva a small smile. “Hey, I’m so glad you came,” she grins, leaning forward to give Eva a hug. Eva can smell her perfume, and it smells expensive, and she can almost place it. It’s flowery and sweet without being tooth-rotting, and subtle enough to make Eva want to lean in and try to smell more. “Come on, we’ve got a bit of a walk. I hope you’re not scared of spiders. Or, more specifically, the spiders’ cobwebs.”

Truth be told, Eva’s terrified of spiders. But she’s willing to make some sacrifices.

They make their way to a bus stop nearby, walking so close that their shoulders continuously brush. A couple of times, their hands brush, and every time they do, Noora smiles over at Eva. Eva finds that she likes these smiles, the ones Noora had been giving so often since last night. They feel private, like an inside joke between just the two of them, something just only they share. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but Eva’s never really been one to look at the reality of a situation. She’s a hopeless romantic at heart.

During the bus ride, they sit with their hips pressed together and their heads ducked, whispering to each other about people at school. One girl who had sex with a boy in the bathroom, a boy who left weed in his friend’s house and let his friend take the blame for it, a group of girls feuding with another group of girls for a Russ bus. Why Russ was even a thing, Eva can’t be sure. No one can drink.

It’s a 10 minute bus ride to wherever Noora is taking her. They walk from there to the edge of a patch of woods, and Noora spins on her heels. “First of all, I’m not bringing you here to murder you,” she says, and it sounds like she means it as a joke while also being completely serious.

Eva rolls her eyes. “I figured that much.”

“Just that, you know, doing what I do has to be far away from where people can find out about it. So...” Noora gestures to the edge of the woods, and Eva looks at it. It’s kind of eerie, the way the trees stand so tall and the vines wrap around them, but she’s too excited to be scared. “If you’re still willing... We’re almost there.”

Instead of saying anything, Eva just shrugs and starts making her way into the trees. Noora’s laugh echoes among them as she joins in, showing Eva the way, since there’s no trail for them to follow.

They end up in front of an old, dilapidated house. The windows are all busted and there’s graffiti all over it. The roof is slouching and there’s holes in the porch and Eva’s pretty sure there’s more than one rat nest in there, based on just the looks alone. But Noora’s face lights up when she sees it, so Eva is helpless to do anything other than follow her inside, no room for hesitation.

“I know it’s really dusty, but give it a chance, okay? I promise you’ll grow to love this place just as much as I have.” They go to the back of the house, to a living room. Noora pulls a lighter out of her pocket and lights candles, enough to light up the room. She lifts up a floorboard and pulls out a cardboard box and a blanket. She spreads the blanket out on the floor, and then opens the box.

There’s a radio inside, the kind Eva has seen photos of. A boom box. Noora puts it on the floor next to the blanket and digs through tapes, humming to herself. She pulls one out and slips it into the boom box, and then smiles up at Eva.

“Are you ready?”

Eva blinks. “Wow, that’s... no build up?”

“Do you want build up?”

Briefly, Eva glances at the watch around her wrist. Curfew isn’t for another four hours, but Eva can’t imagine herself wanting to leave any time soon. Not if the music is as amazing as she’d imagined. Eva swallows her nerves and shakes her head quickly, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Noora gives her an encouraging smile and then reaches out with a manicured finger to press play.

At first, there’s nothing but static. Noora joins Eva standing on the blanket, and grabs Eva’s wrists. She puts them on her hips, and then wraps her own arms around Eva’s neck.

“What good is listening to music for the very first time,” Noora whispers, “if you don’t dance with somebody?”

_I am good, I am grounded_  
_Davy says that I look taller_  
_I can’t get my head around it_  
_I keep feeling smaller and smaller_  
_I need my girl_  
_I need my girl_

Eva takes a shaky breath, looking down at the floor for a moment before snapping her eyes back up to meet Noora’s. Noora just shushes her, grounds her with a gentle grip on her shoulders, and gets them swaying. Eva focuses on not stepping on Noora’s toes, but it’s hard when her eyes are too blurry to see out of.

_Remember when you lost your shit and_  
_Drove the car into the garden_  
_You got out and said I’m sorry_  
_To the vines and no one saw it_  
_I need my girl_  
_I need my girl_

_I’m under the gun again_  
_I know I was a 45% of then_  
_I know I was a lot of things_  
_But I am good, I am grounded_  
_Davy says that I look taller_  
_I can’t get my head around it_  
_I keep feeling smaller and smaller_  
_I need my girl_  
_I need my girl_

Eva stops dancing, pulling her hands away from Noora’s hips and covering her mouth with them. She never really expected to cry when she heard music for the first time, but here she is, ruining a slow dance with her crush and sobbing into her hands. Eva isn’t exactly a pretty crier, either. But trying to stop is futile. All she can do is give in to the tidal waves of emotion that are pulling at her like rip tides, and cry.

Noora wraps her arms around Eva this time, pressing their bodies together again. One hand is on Eva’s lower back and the other is in her hair, holding her head to Noora’s shoulder. Noora just hums along to the song while slowly rocking them back and forth. Eva knows that she probably can’t hear the song over Eva’s sobs, and that she’ll probably be disgusted by Eva’s snot on her shirt later, and that Eva is making an absolute fool of herself; but Noora doesn’t seem to mind all of that in the moment. She just keeps threading her fingers through Eva’s hair and swaying them to the beat.

_There’s some things that I should never_  
_Laugh about in front of family_  
_I tried to call you from the party_  
_It’s full of punks and cannonballers_  
_I need my girl_  
_I need my girl_

“It’s okay,” Noora whispers, right into Eva’s ear, as soon as Eva’s cries begin to slow. Her head hurts like it always does when she cries, but she ignores it in favor of staying burrowed in Noora’s embrace. She doesn’t know if it’s attraction or if it’s embarrassment that’s keeping her there, figures it’s probably a mix of both.

_I’m under the gun again_  
_I know I was a 45% of then_  
_I know I was a lot of things_  
_But I am good, I am grounded_  
_Davy says that I look taller_  
_But I can’t get my head around it_  
_I keep feeling smaller and smaller_

_I keep feeling smaller and smaller  
I keep feeling smaller and smaller_

The song ends, and Noora pulls away to press pause on the boom box. Eva swipes furiously at her cheeks, knowing her skin is probably all splotchy and that her eyes are swollen and tacky. She’s a little embarrassed for crying like that, but Noora just pulls her into another hug, so tight that Eva can’t help but melt into it like they’ve known each other for longer than two days.

“Was it everything you’d hoped it’d be?” Noora asks, and Eva—not trusting her voice—laughs wetly as she nods. “Good! I’m so glad to hear you say that. I’m going to introduce you to all the genres we can. Pop, alternative, acoustic, rap, R&B, blues, classic rock... Everything I’m forgetting. And the music changes by decade, like 70s rock is different from 80s rock, although classic rock as a genre is usually associated with bands from the 80s. And pop from the 90s is insanely different from pop in the 2000s, and both of those are insanely different from pop in the 2010s.”

“All of that today?” Eva croaks out.

“No, silly. We’d run out of time.” Noora smiles nervously. “I was hoping you’d be willing to come out here more often. I know it’s risky and highly illegal, so I’d totally understand if you say no. In fact, you’d probably be better off saying no.”

After less than a minute of contemplating, Eva rubs the last of the tackiness from her eyes and shrugs, letting a smile cross over her own face. “What’ve I got to lose?” She grins, reaching out to press play. Another song starts playing, more upbeat this time. Noora and Eva dance on the blanket, moving hips and limbs and heads to the beat of the songs as they go by. Eva loves every single song she hears, swears she’s going to remember the lyrics to all of them despite only hearing them once.

Noora puts in a tape for 90s R&B, and Eva finds that this type of music is her favorite. She loves the rapping, and the beats that are so easy to dance to. She can’t stop laughing so hard that her face hurts, losing her breath as she dances like an idiot. Eva thinks she could fall in love like this; dancing around an abandoned house to illegal music. It’s nothing like the books, where boys and girls fall in love over hot chocolate mustaches and kisses in the rain and drives down the PCH, but Eva thinks it’s just as beautiful. There’s something possibly more romantic about this forbidden love.

It’s an hour to curfew when they lay down on the blanket, out of breath and still giggling. Eva turns on her side, facing Noora. Noora turns too, faces Eva right back. From this angle, Eva can see the lightest dusting of freckles on the bridge of Noora’s nose, barely noticeable. Her fingers ache to reach out and touch, so she folds her fingers together to keep them from doing anything stupid. Her mind doesn’t always work with her limbs, sometimes.

“Music is so... _wonderful_ ,” Eva whispers, and Noora’s smile—though small and closed mouth—is sweet and soft. “I don’t understand why they ever made it illegal. Something that can bring so many people happiness and joy and, and, you know, like...help people understand their feelings. I don’t understand how society benefits from being barred from music.”

Noora shrugs a little, and places a hand under her cheek. Eva watches the action and tries not to think of that hand on Eva’s cheek, caressing lightly. “There’s a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn’t be. And a lot of things that are looked down on that shouldn’t be.” Her fingers reach up to touch the lesbian pride flag pinned to her shirt, and Eva frowns. “I admire Even and Isak for being so out and proud. I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, loving who I love and just being me. The way I was born. And it’s so easy for me to break the law and listen to music where someone could accidentally stumble too far past the tree line and hear it, but the thought of holding a girl’s hand in public just... It makes my stomach hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” Eva whispers.

Noora sits up, shaking her head. “No, don’t say that. Don’t say you’re sorry for me. I don’t _want_ you to be sorry for me, I don’t want _anyone_ to be sorry for me.” She turns to face Eva, a hard look on her face. “There’s nothing tragic about being a lesbian, Eva. There’s nothing to feel bad about, nothing to say sorry for, nothing I will ever be ashamed of. There’s nothing in this world that will ever make me want people to feel sorry for me, I don’t care how many anti-gay propaganda is put in newspapers or how many teachers recommended conversion therapy to my parents or how many fucking sentences are put on the wall that say I’m going to hell because god hates—” She chokes off the end of her sentence, her chest heaving.

Eva sits up too, tries to reach out and touch Noora’s hand. “Noora, I didn’t—”

“Every single fucking day, gay people are shamed and hated and spit on simply for being gay. They’re _killed_ for it, and for what? For fucking what? Gay people get murdered and our government does nothing about it because even though it’s illegal to commit murder, the government doesn’t care about us! The government will never care! They let us be killed just because we exist, just because we love. I mean, fuck, I’m just trying to pass history class with that shitfuck of a teacher, meanwhile other people are out there actively oppressing my community, and _I’m_ supposed to be the one who’s ashamed? _I’m_ the one that people feel sorry for?”

Eva reaches out, grabbing Noora’s wrists and tugging her forward. Noora goes, lets herself be pulled into Eva’s hug, lets herself be the vulnerable one for once. Noora doesn’t cry, but Eva can feel how shaky she is, how she shudders with every breath.

“Maybe we should head back home,” Eva murmurs into Noora’s hair, loosening her hold a little. Noora just pulls her closer again. “It’s okay, Noora. It’s okay, everything’s okay. Lets get home before curfew, yeah? We don’t want to get in trouble.”

They hold hands the whole way back to Noora’s, but Eva’s not freaking out as much as she normally would, if the circumstances were different. She knows that Noora just needs it right now, needs the pressure of someone’s palm against her own, needs to remember that someone in this great big world actually does care about her. Everyone needs that sometimes, no matter what front they put up.

Isak and Even are both home when Eva and Noora get there. They’re cuddled on the couch watching a film, and they smile brightly when they see Eva and Noora. Eva waves and moves to say hi, but Noora just takes off running to her room, slamming the door shut. Eva startles at the sound of the door hitting the frame.

“Is she okay?” Even asks, looking prepared to stand up if Eva were to say no.

“I... don’t really know,” Eva admits, sitting down next to Isak on the couch. “I think I fucked up and made her think I’m homophobic.”

“You’re bisexual.”

“Isak,” Eva sighs, “being lgbt doesn’t excuse me from homophobic behaviors. I’m just as capable of being offensive as anybody else.”

Even leans over Isak and holds up his hand for a high five. Eva rolls her eyes but high fives him anyway, mostly for the ego boost it gives her. Even’s approval may as well be a Nobel Peace Prize, honestly. Everyone’s out to get it. To be honest, a lot of people do (Even isn’t in the business of disliking anyone), but for some reason it doesn’t make it any less special.

Isak waves his hands in front of him to separate Eva and Even. “Okay, yeah, you’re right, whatever. What happened?”

“We were just hanging out and talking about some stuff, right? And she was telling me some personal shit, like how she’s scared of being as openly gay as you two. Or, for Even, as openly pansexual. And I said I was sorry, because like, I know how much it sucks. I know what it’s like to feel like the whole world is against you, you know? But she got upset and started telling me that she didn’t want me to be sorry for her because she wasn’t ashamed of anything. I tried to explain myself but she got herself worked up and I decided it was just best to bring her home and let her calm down instead of trying to defend myself and just, like, making it worse.”

In unison, all three of them look at Noora’s door where it sits at the end of the hall. Then, the two boys look back at Eva, while Eva continues staring at the door.

“Well she’s not going to talk to me,” Isak says simply, “and she doesn’t know Even that well. Looks like that leaves one option.”

“Me?!”

Isak shrugs, “Mess it up, dress it up.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Eva stands up, wiping her sweaty hands on her jeans. “Fine. But if I fuck things up even more I’m putting full blame on you, Isak.”

“Why?! Even was part of it too,” Isak splutters.

Eva starts down the hall. “Yeah, but I actually like him,” Eva teases, holding up her middle finger until she reaches the door. She knocks once, and then twice.

“Come in,” she hears Noora say, and her heart clenches.

When the door creaks open, she’s greeted by the sight of Noora sitting on her bed and furiously scribbling in her notebook. She means to ask Noora if she’s okay, but instead what comes out is, “What’re you writing?”

Blue eyes meet hers, and Eva feels like she’s being scrutinized, like she’s really fucked everything up. She doesn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if she hurt Noora. Noora, the girl who showed her music and held her when she cried about it. The girl who trusted Eva enough after only two days to let her in on some pretty big insecurities. The girl who trusted Eva enough after only two days to show her biggest secret. And trusted Eva enough not to tell.

Noora clicks her pen and holds out the notebook, raising her eyebrows expectantly. Eva crosses the room and takes it gently, turning the page to look at it. It’s a drawing this time, done in green ink, a girl with a messy bun and blue eyes (Eva looks around for a blue pen but doesn’t find one) and the smallest gap between her teeth, so small you’d wouldn’t notice it unless you knew to look for it.

It’s Eva.

“Eva, I’m sorry that I freaked out like that. I know you didn’t mean—”

But Eva doesn’t let her finish. She just tosses the notebook aside and presses their lips together. Noora freezes almost instantly, but melts into it just as fast, hands coming up to cup Eva’s cheeks. They both crawl backwards onto the bed, never separating, until Noora’s head is against the pillows and Eva’s legs are bracketing her hips.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you to do that,” Noora breathes against her lips.

If Eva’s mouth wasn’t so busy, she might’ve told Noora she was in love with her.

  
♡♡♡

  
“See, you’re getting the hang of it now!” Noora laughs, guiding Eva’s hips as they practice a salsa. Noora had apparently taken a year in Madrid before moving to Oslo and had taken a dance class there. She wasn’t prima ballerina (singlehandedly ruining Eva’s hopes and dreams) but she has decent rhythm, and Eva certainly doesn’t mind watching the way Noora’s hips twist and move. Especially in the high waisted jeans that she’s always wearing.

And the good thing is that now, Eva can touch. There’s nothing stopping her from reaching out and pressing her thumbs into the junction of Eva’s hips, or from pulling her in for kisses, or from reaching out to trace the freckles on her nose.

“This is like Dirty Dancing!” Noora laughs as she moves, twirling Eva around.

“What’s Dirty Dancing?”

“A film,” Noora says, projecting her voice over the music blasting. “There’s an age gap between the boy and the girl that get together, but other than that it’s pretty decent. I’ll have to show it to you sometime.”

Eva grins wickedly, trying to match her pace with Noora’s. She doesn’t miss the way Noora becomes entranced in her hips, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when Noora grabs her ass. Eva just laughs, leaning in closer and pressing their hips together, letting Noora feel all she wants. She, for her part, runs her hands up to fiddle with the clasp of Noora’s bra.

“As if we’d actually watch it,” Eva murmurs, ducking to press her face in Noora’s neck. She kisses the soft skin there, humming when Noora tilts her head to allow Eva better access.

“We are both disastrous gays.”

Eva snorts, “Nothing disastrous about it.”

  
♡♡♡

  
It’s definitely not the first time Eva’s woken up in Noora’s bed. It’s not even the first time she’s woken up _naked_ in Noora’s bed. It is, however, the first time she’s woken up naked and alone in Noora’s bed. The sunlight coming from the window is burning Eva’s skin, but it only makes her want to burrow further into the duvet. She knows she’s alone, she can feel how light the bed is and how cool the left side of the bed is, but she can’t make herself get up. She’s sleep-drunk and not even knowledge that Noora isn’t in bed is enough to get her up.

What is enough to get her up, however, is the smell of bacon. Eva rolls to lay on her back, blinking a couple of times and stretching her back. Once her muscles are loose and her eyes don’t burn, she throws her legs over the side of the bed. She grabs the clean panties she’d shoved in her purse before coming over the night before and pulls those on, and hesitates over grabbing her shirt before deciding to head over to Noora’s closet. She picks an oversized jumper and pulls it over her head. The hem falls to her mid-thigh, so she chooses not to wear pants.

Quietly, she pads out of Noora’s room and towards the kitchen. She half expects Even to be standing at the stove, Isak attached to his back like a koala, cooking whatever Isak had asked for (but always making enough for everyone, because Even is an actual angel). Instead, she finds Noora, wearing sweatpants and the same t-shirt she’d been wearing the night prior. Eva tiptoes in closer, looping her arms around Noora’s middle and burying her face in between Noora’s shoulder blades.

Noora hums, sliding her free hand across Eva’s elbow, coming to rest on top of Eva’s hands where they’re pressed into Noora’s stomach. “Good morning, sunshine,” Noora murmurs, her voice gentle and soft, like she’s worried about breaking the tranquility of the morning.

“Good morning,” Eva mumbles into the fabric of Noora’s shirt. “Are Isak and Even still asleep? Eskild? Linn?”

“Eskild dragged Linn to the fish market this morning, and knowing Eskild, he’ll keep her out for as long as he can. Isak stayed at Even’s last night. They left soon after you got here because Even’s mum was having a birthday dinner. They ended up just sleeping there. I wouldn’t expect them back anytime soon, Even’s dad makes killer breakfasts. His waffles are to die for.”

“Isak told me that you weren’t that close with Even.”

“I’m not,” Noora says, letting go of Eva’s hands to reach over and lower the temperature of the burner she’s cooking on. “His dad stayed over once.”

Eva hums, pulling away from Noora and whispering that she’ll be right back. She heads back to Noora’s room, digging around in the closet until she finds what she’s looking for. She comes back with the small tape player and the box of tapes, setting it down on the counter. Noora smiles when she sees it.

She double checks to make sure the food is okay on its own for a moment, and then steps towards the player. She takes the box of tapes from Eva, digging around until she finds one she likes. She sticks it in the player and then moves back to the food, taking it off the heat and putting it aside.

When the music starts up, Noora spins on her heel, holding up the spatula to her mouth like a microphone. “ _I made it through the wilderness, somehow I made it through_ ,” Noora lip syncs, and Eva just leans against the counter, trying to fight her smiles and giggles. “ _Didn’t know how lost I was, until I found you_.”

“You’re such an idiot,” Eva murmurs, and Noora just winks.

“ _I was beat, incomplete, I’d been had, I was sad and blue. But you made me feel, yeah, you made me feel, shiny and new._ ” Noora steps closer, using the hand not holding the spatula to grip Eva’s hip, pulling her closer. Eva fights it, but eventually lets herself be pressed against Noora. “ _Like a virgin, touched for the very first time. Like a virgin, when your heart beats next to mine_.”

Upon hearing the lyrics, Eva can’t help the surprised laughter that bubbles out. She covers her mouth as Noora just keeps lip syncing along, putting on this faux-seductive expression. Eva can see right through her, can see how much she’s trying not to laugh. It’s the cutest thing in the world, and she wants nothing more than to kiss Noora silly, but she figures Noora would just be upset that she didn’t get to finish her serenade.

Eva is nothing if not considerate, so she restrains herself and allows Noora to continue. She’d spent months doing it before, surely she can wait a few minutes.

“ _You’re so fine, and you’re mine. Make me strong, yeah, you make me bold. Oh, your love thawed out what was scared and cold. Like a virgin, touched for the very first time. Like a virgin—_ ” Noora doesn’t get to continue, because Eva discovers that she can’t wait a few minutes, not when Noora keeps grinding against her and exaggeratedly biting her lip.

Thankfully Noora just kisses back, giggling into it. “It’s funny because neither of us are virgins,” Noora teases, pressing their foreheads together for a moment before turning back to the food. Madonna keeps singing in the background, the song beginning to fade out.

“Speak for yourself!” Eva laughs, moving to sit on top of the counter. “I’m as innocent and pure as a flower.”

Noora turns around, giving her a look. “Is that so? Must’ve been someone else in my bed last night, then.”

“Are you telling me that you’re cheating on me?”

“Shit, you weren’t supposed to find out about that,” Noora sighs. “Now we have to break up.”

Eva’s jaw drops. “What?! _You’re_ breaking up with _me_?! You’re the one who cheated!”

“You snooze, you lose— Hey, turn it up, I love this song!”

“Baby, you love every song,” Eva teases, but she leans over to turn up the radio anyway. This song is different by the Madonna song on before. It’s a little bit slower, and a lot less suggestive than the one before. “No wonder you like this song. I bet you know how to play it on guitar.”

Noora winks over her shoulder, turning around to sing into her spatula again. Eva rolls her eyes, moaning and groaning about how she doesn’t want to bear witness to this embarrassment again, but in reality her heart is soaring. It’s been three months since they’d first kissed and Eva was more in love now than she ever was before.

Noora holds her hand out, waits for Eva to take it. Eva does, linking their fingers. “ _Saying I love you is not the words I want to hear from you. It’s not that I want you not to say, but if you only knew, how easy it would be to show me how you feel. More than words is all you have to do to make it real, then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me, ‘cause I’d already know._ ”

It’s not the first, nor the third, nor the twentieth, and probably not even the fiftieth time Eva’s heard music. But she still feels the same lump in her throat that she’d felt three months ago, standing in a dusty ass abandoned house and slow dancing with the girl she’d been crushing on for ages.

Part of her thinks Noora notices, because Noora gives her that gentle smile, the one that’s only for them. She keeps lip syncing, and Eva’s lips keep trembling, and they both keep standing in one spot in the little kitchen, nothing but love between them. Maybe Eva doesn’t have to say it. Maybe—just maybe—Noora already knows.

Maybe Noora feels it, too.

“ _Now that I’ve tried to talk to you and make you understand, all you have to do is close your eyes and just reach out your hands,_ ” Noora lip syncs, their eyes locked. Eva’s are watery, and she thinks Noora’s might be, too. Eva wants to say it, wants to just spit it out, but she’s frozen in place. “ _And touch me, hold me close, don’t ever let me go. More than words is all I ever needed you to show, then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me. Cause I’d already know_.”

“I love you,” Eva chokes out, and then her breath lodges in her chest, threatening to suffocate her heart.

Noora smiles again, reaching out to turn down the radio. “I know,” she whispers, pulling Eva in with her grip on Eva’s hips. Eva wraps her arms around Noora’s neck, pressing their foreheads together again. “I love you more,” Noora whispers, and Eva can’t help but kiss her again. She can taste salty tears on her lips, and it takes her longer than it should to realize that it’s Noora crying, not her.

When she pulls back, she sees the tears streaming down Noora’s cheeks. “Babe, are you okay? Why are you crying?” Eva asks, cupping Noora’s cheeks and swiping at the tears with her thumbs.

Noora just laughs, shaking Eva’s hands away. “I’m just happy,” Noora says. “You make me so happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.”

Eva just smiles, and presses their lips together again. She doesn’t have to remind Noora that she loves her. Noora already knows.


	2. part 2

Eva swings their hands between them, practically dragging Noora along. Noora’s laughing, trying to walk fast enough to match Eva’s pace, but ultimately failing. Eva’s just excited, and who could blame her? Noora had shared the most personal secrets she had, and what had Eva done in return (besides kept that secret a secret)? Nothing. So, this is her chance, to show Noora something as meaningful to her as the house and the music is to Noora.

“Where are we going?” Noora asks for the millionth time that afternoon. She’d been trying to take sips of her coffee throughout the whole walk, but Eva just kept tugging her along, nearly resulting in Noora spilling her coffee down the front of her blouse. Eva wishes she could say she was sorry for it, but she isn’t.

Eva squeezes Noora’s fingers. “It’s a surprise, baby! If I tell you, it ruins the surprise.”

“Eva, my love, you’ve been dating me long enough that you should know how much I hate surprises.”

The term of endearment admittedly makes Eva stutter in her step, nearly tripping over a crack on the pavement. If Noora notices that, she doesn’t point it out. Eva’s grateful for it, even if she wouldn’t mind all that much if Noora had. Everyone knows how whipped Eva is. She’d do anything Noora asked her to, pretty much, and Noora would do the exact same. They were ride or dies, that’s the beginning and end of it. They had each other’s backs. Eva and Noora against the world.

But Eva doesn’t let on to this train of thought. Noora would never let her live it down if she knew how sappy Eva was being. “And you’ve been dating me long enough to know how much I love them,” Eva retorts, tugging on Noora’s hand when she starts slowing down too much.

“Great. That means I can surprise you, and you can never surprise me. It’s a win-win, really. So tell me where we’re going.”

“I’m not going to fall for that,” Eva laughs, stopping once they get outside of Sana’s house. Noora freezes outside of Sana’s house, looking properly nervous for a long few moments. It takes a moment for Eva to remember that Noora had yet to properly meet all of Eva’s friends. She’d met Sana, because Eva was always around Sana. She speaks to Vilde for a few minutes at least once a week, maybe twice if Eva and Noora actually manage to get to school early. She’d never met Chris. Although that’s mostly because Chris was away at a Christian school about an hour away and didn’t get the chance to come to Oslo very often. Also, Noora had never been around all four girls at the same time.

Eva sighs, bringing Noora’s hand to her mouth and pressing kisses to the knuckles. “Nobody’s home. We’re just going to go through to her backyard, because it’s the fastest way to where we’re going,” Eva explains gently. Noora swallows visibly but nods, so Eva kisses her knuckles again a few times before leading the way into Sana’s garden.

They climb under the chain link fence the same way Eva had the night she hit her head. Except it’s a lot slower going, this time, because Noora’s fluffy sweater gets caught in the metal of it, and it takes Eva at least five minutes of careful work to dislodge it without ripping a hole in the sweater. Once Eva makes it to the other side, she has to remember the way through the woods, since there isn’t a trail here either.

Noora sighs as they walk through, twigs crunching under their heels. “If you’re taking me to an abandoned house, I’ve already done that and you’re unoriginal,” she sighs, and Eva just rolls her eyes.

“I’m not doing that. You’ll see, so trust me.” She can see the lights of the skatepark starting to glow in the distance, even though it isn’t yet dark outside. “In the meantime... Is water wet?”

“What?”

“Is water wet? Me and Sana have been arguing that for, like, a solid year now.”

Noora sighs, looking down towards her feet while she’s thinking. Or maybe she’s just watching out for poison ivy. “Of course water’s wet,” she says eventually, and Eva scoffs, ripping their hands apart so she can face Noora properly. Noora makes a noise of protest and chases Eva’s hand, catching her fingers and tugging her closer again, linking their fingers once it’s in reach. Eva ignores the fluttering in her heart because she has to remember Noora’s a _traitor_ who thinks water is wet.

“Water is not wet! How can water be wet?”

“Because it’s _water_.”

Eva scoffs again. “Water isn’t wet. Wet describes how we experience water. Wetness isn’t a property of a liquid, it’s a description of what happens to dry things when they come in contact with water. You have to be dry in order to get wet, and water isn’t dry. Water isn’t anything, it’s just water. It can be hot water, cold water, a puddle, an ocean, it doesn’t matter. It’s not wet.”

“Wow,” Noora laughs, sounding a lot more impressed than most people usually are when Eva brings up this controversy. “I can’t believe you’ve actually dedicated time from your life to forming a theory on why water isn’t wet.”

“It’s not a theory! It’s fact!”

“I don’t believe you.”

Eva huffs, going to pull her hand free again. And once again, Noora doesn’t let her. “Well, the good thing about facts is they exist and are true whether or not you believe in them.”

“Okay, Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Noora teases, and Eva glares at her.

“Neil deGrasse Tyson said that _science_ is true whether or not you believe in it. Which is applicable in this is situation, but it’s also not what I said.”

Noora hums contemplatively, knocking their shoulders together. “You’ve been hanging around Isak too much. His nerdiness is rubbing off on you,” she teases. “Where’s the cute girl from my history class that believed that Romeo and Juliet was a true story?”

“Oh, my god! Can you let that go?!” Eva groans, but she’s smiling, trying to hold back her laughter. Noora just chuckles and pulls Eva closer so she can press a quick kiss to her cheek. Eva makes a show of scoffing and wiping the lipstick off of her cheek. “That was gay.”

“Damn, you got me.”

“I know I’m hot and all, but I don’t really swing that way. Watch your step.” Right after Eva says it, Noora trips over a huge toadstool, nearly falling over (and nearly dragging Eva down with her). “There’s a fungus among us.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“Fuck you,” Eva teases, and then braces herself as the reach the edge of the woods. Splayed out before them is the skatepark, occupied by a bunch of boys on sticker covered skateboards and a couple of girls, though they seem more interested in watching the boys. “More girls should get into skateboarding. Overthrow the patriarchal power structure that undoubtedly exists here.”

Noora raises a clenched fist. “Destroy the patriarchy.” She looks out over the skatepark, at the greasy pre-teen boys and the girls (at least, the ones actually trying to skate) with shaky knees trying to balance, and then glances back at Eva. “Tell me about this place.”

The grass is a little wet, but they sit down anyway. Their hips press together and Eva hooks one of her legs over the top of Noora’s, and their joined hands sit in the junction of their thighs. There’s a slight chill in the air, perhaps simply because they’re sitting in the shade of the trees, so Eva burrows a little closer to Noora.

“I used to come here all the time with my dad when I was younger. I was born only two months after he turned 18, so when I turned 5 he had just turned 23, and he was still like, young and cool enough to skate here. Not to say that older people can’t skate, but... It’s not often you see a 40 year old man out here, I guess. That’s besides the point. Anyways, until I was about ten years old, we came out here. He taught me how to skate, how to balance. And because of that, and my relationship with my dad, people always labelled me as the tomboy. You know? And I guess I kind of was. I didn’t scream around bugs and I could skate and I got along with boys a lot better than I did with girls, but... Gender roles are stupid, anyways. I wasn’t any less of a girl because I did things that, stereotypically, girls didn’t. But I was so scared of being the tomboy. Boys didn’t like girls who were dirty and wore jeans instead of skirts. I was _ten years old_ , and already I was being taught that my self worth depended on what boys thought of me. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“So you stopped skateboarding?” Noora asks gently, and Eva nods.

“Yeah. My dad did, too, ‘cause he got too old or whatever. So we stopped going.” Eva looks up at the skatepark again, watches one of the only girls there drop into a bowl and pull off a better trick than some of the boys there. She hopes that girl is proud of it. “When I was 15, I started dating Jonas. Yeah, Isak’s best friend, Jonas. He didn’t mind that I was a tomboy. He brought me to the skatepark and watched me skate and taught me a few tricks, and he didn’t get upset or angry whenever I was better than him. He thought it was sexy. I’d never experienced that before. So I started coming more often. Even after Jonas and I broke up, I kept skating. I learned from that relationship with him that I was letting boys’ opinions mean more to me than my own, and that was so toxic. It isn’t meant to be that way. I learned that I needed to be myself, for me and for no one else. And whoever doesn’t like it can go fuck themselves. Sure, it’s a little difficult sometimes, but I try not to let myself change for anyone.”

“Do you still skateboard?”

Eva laughs a little. “It’s been a while, I admit that. When Isak and Even brought me over because I had that scrape on my temple, remember that? The night we started talking?” She asks, and Noora nods. “Yeah, I tried to show off and ended up busting my ass in the bowl. So, yeah, I’ve been slacking. But this is still my happy place. The place where I can be myself.“

“Are you going to show me these cool tricks, then?” Noora asks, leaning into Eva. She breaks their hands apart and drapes her arm over Eva’s shoulders, letting Eva bury her face in Noora’s chest. “I mean, I just taught you how to play the piano. The least you could do is let me watch you skateboard.”

“I don’t have a skateboard with me.”

Noora shrugs. “Borrow one. We won’t need it very long.”

“And why is that?”

“Because,” Noora grins, “I don’t think I’ll be able to sit and watch you skateboard for very long without needing to drag you to bed. I give myself five minutes tops before I start losing my mind.”

Eva laughs brightly, leaning in to kiss Noora’s cheek, then nose, then lips. She lets herself linger on Noora’s lips for a bit, before pulling back and wiping any excess lipstick off of them. “I think five minutes is a little generous. I give you two,” Eva teases. Noora nods and holds out her hand for Eva to shake, signifying a bet. “Oh yeah? What does the winner get?”

Noora grins wickedly. “Whatever she wants,” she whispers, her voice low and sultry, and Eva practically drags her down to the skatepark.

(In the end, Eva wins. Noora lasts two minutes and thirty two seconds before she’s demanding to go home. Eva’s not one to kiss and tell, but she will admit this—Noora promised her anything she wanted, and Eva’s always been more of a giver than a receiver.)

 

♡♡♡

  
Eva puts her hands on the piano keys, trying to focus on that and not on the way Noora’s hands are right under hers. “Just follow my movements,” Noora says, right in Eva’s ear. Eva is sitting between Noora’s spread legs, Noora’s chest to Eva’s back, as she reaches Eva how to play.

They start playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D, which Noora says used to be a wedding song. There’s an emotional tie to it just from that knowledge, one that has Eva thinking about a wedding, even though it’s only been four and a half months of her and Noora dating. She can’t think of anyone else in the world she’d want to spend her life with.

  
♡♡♡

  
Vilde lays back, resting her head in Eva’s lap. She’s got a glass of wine in her hand, a seemingly permanent occurrence, even though nobody else in the room had wanted to drink.

Sana and Chris are curled up in the corner of the couch, sharing a blanket and laughing at whatever Chris is pointing out in one of the books off of Sana’s bookshelf. Yousef had left for Turkey earlier in the day, so all three of them had come over without hesitation to keep Sana company. Sana wasn’t an emotional person, but the girls knew it affected her.

Noora had been invited, originally. All of the girls had gotten closer to her, especially over the last few weeks, on account of the fact that Vilde had tried to round her in for a Russ bus. After that icebreaker (and believe Eva, it was a hell of an icebreaker), it was as if Noora had been a part of the group all along. Vilde had threatened to steal her and leave Magnus, to which Magnus had promptly demanded that they go home. Eva six months prior would’ve been gagging, but Eva now, five months in a happy relationship, had just smiled.

She’d planned to come, Eva keeps insisting that. But she’d gotten sick three days ago and had kept everyone away, even Eva. Isak had confirmed that Noora wouldn’t even leave her room, couldn’t get out of bed because she had no energy. Eva had been worried, naturally, but she’d been promised that Noora was getting better and would no doubt be back at school Monday.

Of course, Eva couldn’t help but wonder if Noora would be at the house on Sunday morning to sing, as she’d done since childhood, as Eva had joined her in doing for the past five months.

“Eva, is Noora okay?” Vilde asks, looking up at Eva from her lap. Eva hums, nodding. “Oh. I noticed she hadn’t been at school recently. Are you two in a fight?”

“No, Vilde, she’s only sick. You know that.”

“Maybe we should make her soup or something,” Chris says, and Eva bites her lip. She wants to do something nice for Noora, but she also knows her girlfriend enough to know that sometimes she just needs her space. The trouble is, Eva isn’t sure if now really is one of those times, or if Noora would actually be happy to see Eva.

Happy to see Eva, maybe. She figures Noora wouldn’t actually be very happy to be bombarded by three other girls, too. Not if she’s as sick as everyone has been letting on. Eva’s pretty damn dramatic, but she’s never known Noora to be that way.

So, she shakes her head. “I think Noora just needs space to rest right now. I’m sure nurse Even is taking good care of her.”

“Don’t discredit Isak,” Sana jumps in, and everyone raises their eyebrows. “What? Don’t look at me like that! He’s actually pretty decent at biology, and he wants to be a doctor, so maybe he— Stop looking at me like that!”

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just...” Vilde trails off, pressing her laughs into the palm of her hand. Chris and Eva stifle giggles, too, as Sana just glares. “I guess we’re just shocked that you’re actually complimenting Isak.”

“It’s hardly a compliment. It’s just true. He’s good at it and he knows his shit. That’s not complimenting him,” Sana fires back.

Eva shrugs. “I mean, it kinda is, when you consider that you were calling him a talentless imbecile just last week.” Sana glares at her this time, and Eva just laughs. “Anyways, yeah, I’m sure she’s fine. We’ll see her on Monday and everything will be okay. She’s been texting me and calling me, so it’s not like anything is changed. She just doesn’t want anyone to get sick, and she apparently hasn’t had the energy to even get out of bed. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s trying to keep people away. Especially me.”

Eva knew what it was like to only want her partners to see the good side of her. And it’s not like Eva’s never seen Noora’s dark sides, because she has, but it’s only human to want to hide physical attributes that one has convinced themselves is unattractive. Everyone’s guilty of it.

Everyone goes a little quiet for a minute, before Vilde lifts herself off of Eva’s lap and gives her a serious look. “Eva. I have a question,” she says, and Eva nods. “I’ve been thinking, and... I made out with a girl at a party last weekend. And I never told anyone because I was ashamed of it. But I don’t know _why_ I’m ashamed of it.” She sighs, looking up at Eva desperately, like she believes Eva holds all the answers. “The feelings that arise don’t necessarily mean I’m a lesbian. Right?”

“No, of course they don’t,” Eva reassures, and Vilde looks stumped. “I have feelings for a girl and I’m not a lesbian. I’m bisexual. I like both, girls and boys. There’s also pansexual, which is also both. There’s a difference but I don’t want to overwhelm you, so...”

“But—” Vilde begins, and then cuts herself off. Eva waits patiently until Vilde’s ready to speak again. “Magnus and I, we don’t have sex as much as I say we do. Every time we try, I just can’t get into it. Maybe I’m just nervous.”

Eva bites back what she wants to say, because she knows Vilde won’t be ready to hear it right now. “Maybe you are,” she allows. “But don’t be scared to...explore some other explanations.”

“I just get nervous because I know you and Noora have sex a lot, and you and Jonas had sex a lot, and Chris and Kasper did, and Isak and Even do, Eskild does... Everyone is comfortable having sex with their partner except me. And I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Chris says, and all eyes turn to her. “If you’re not into it, you’re not into it. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. You don’t owe Magnus sex just because you’re in a relationship.”

“There’s this thing called asexuality—” Sana begins, but Vilde cuts her off.

“No, it’s not that.” Her cheeks turn bright red, and Eva rests a comforting hand on her upper arm. “When I was kissing that girl, I was thinking of having sex with her, and I liked it. I was so into it that I didn’t even think about Magnus until later, when I realized he was watching. He wasn’t angry, he was just cheering us on.”

Eva can’t help but scoff. “Men.”

“True,” Chris adds, reaching out for a fistbump.

Vilde gives another uneasy smile. “I don’t know. It’s all confusing. I think I’m just nervous to have sex with Magnus and it’s getting me all confused.” She lays back down again, seemingly done with the conversation, so everyone drops it.

Sana turns on the TV and they watch some rerun of a ‘sitcom’ that has way too many political references to be funny, but it fills the silence. They all sip wine (again, minus Sana) and make jokes about the shit on TV, just enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes that’s all they need, just the feeling of being around each other, like sisters.

There’s a quote out there, one by Dennis Lehane, that Eva read once. It’s stuck with her for quite some time, and whenever she thinks about it, she thinks about her friends.

 _Your first family is your blood family and you always be true to that. That means something. But there’s another family, and that’s the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they’re as much blood as your first family. Maybe more so, because they don’t have to look out for you, and they don’t have to love you. They choose to_.

Eva looks around at her family, and thinks of the love they all have for each other, even in the shitty world they live in. Nothing could break them. They wouldn’t let it. That’s more comforting than anything else in the world.

They go to bed around 3am after dozing off multiple times on the couch. Sana takes her bed, Vilde takes a mattress, Eva takes a couch, and Chris takes a blow up mattress. Eva’s the only one in the living room, but she doesn’t mind it, because Sana’s door is right there at the couch and she can see them from where she is. She falls asleep to the sound of Vilde’s snoring, just as soft as she is, but still extremely annoying.

When she wakes up next, she opens her eyes to pitch black and a hand over her mouth. She instantly panics, trying to scream and thrash around, but the person is shushing her.

“Shh, Eva, Eva, calm down baby. It’s me, it’s Noora. Shh, be quiet.”

Eva’s eyes work to try and make out Noora’s face in the faint glow of a light in the kitchen. It takes a moment but it works, and she melts into the couch cushions. “Fuck, babe, you scared the shit out of me. I thought someone was going to kidnap me or murder me. Or both.” She rubs her forehead. “Why are you here? How did you even get in?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Noora whispers. “I know this is super weird, but I was thinking today, of how cool it would be if you and I were somewhere else. Alone. You know?”

“Like, a holiday?”

Noora nods. “Yeah, sort of.” She bites her lip, and Eva tries to search her eyes to figure out what the hell is going on, but it doesn’t work. It’s too dark. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? I’d go to New York or Rome.”

“Rome would be cool, I guess? Noora, what’s going on?”

“Let’s go to Rome, then,” Noora whispers excitedly. Eva just blinks tiredly and then pinches herself, trying to determine if this is some weird ass dream. “I’m serious. My uncle has a boat that he could take us to Denmark with, and then we could take a flight to Rome. It’s not a long flight, but we’d have to bring blankets and books. That’d take up more room on the boat, so we’d have to downsize on clothes, but it’d be worth it. Don’t you think? You and me living in Rome, building a life together, away from all of this? I know you want that, too. Tell me I’m not crazy.”

Eva pushes herself to sit up, rubbing her eyes and trying to strain them against the dark. Noora is still huddled on the ground, and Eva pulls her up to sit next to her on the couch. Noora goes easily, lacing their fingers together and shifting to cuddle into Eva’s sleep-warm body. Eva lets her.

But not without a price. “What’s wrong, Noora?” She asks gently. “What’s going on? This is really weird coming from you. I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Don’t you wanna run away with me, Eva?”

“Run away?” Eva’s sleepy mind works, turning all the cogs and gears to try and put the puzzle together. It isn’t working. Noora’s harboring all the middle pieces so all Eva has is a frame. “I don’t.. We can’t just run away, Noora. I’m so confused, where the hell is this coming from?”

Noora sighs, gently standing up and unlacing their fingers. Eva tries to follow, but Noora just coaxes her back into the blankets, head resting on the pillow. Eva’s eyes instantly get heavy again. “Nothing, baby. Just go back to sleep, okay? I love you so much, don’t you ever forget that.” She presses a kiss to Eva’s hair, dry and chapped. No lipstick.

Eva feels a piece of paper being placed into her hand, and then she’s asleep again, and Noora is gone.

The second time she wakes up, sunlight is filling the room and the only thing that allows Eva to believe that last night was real is the fact that there’s a folded up paper clenched in her left hand. Eva quickly sits up, feet hitting the floor with a thump. She goes to unfold it, but is stopped when Sana comes in, holding a bowl of Cheerios. The other girls soon follow.

“What’s that?” Vilde asks when she sits down, pointing to the paper in Eva’s hand. Part of her wishes she’d thought to hide the letter, but the rest of her doesn’t care. Something seriously strange is going on with Noora, and Eva isn’t sure she’ll be able to figure it out if she doesn’t get at least some help.

So, Eva shrugs. “A letter Noora gave me. I haven’t opened it yet. But she’s been acting really weird lately, so I’m nervous.”

“Weird like breaking into my house?!” Sana demands, but Eva knows that it’s at least 80% teasing, so she moves on.

“She came in and was, like, asking me to run away with her,” Eva explains, and everyone exchanges confused glances. “Maybe I should just read this and figure out what the hell is going on.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t opened it yet, honestly,” Chris admits. Eva laughs a little bit as she unfolds the note. It turns out to be a few pieces of paper folded together, so Eva gets them sorted and unfolds them completely.

Her jaw hits the floor when she realizes what it is. It’s sheet music, written in green ink. Eva stares at the music notes and the neatly printed lyrics and the small _jeg elsker deg_ written at the top, and she feels all of the breath leave her lungs. And then she hears Vilde gasp, and her heart sinks in her chest.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she blurts, rounding on all three of them. “Please don’t tell anyone. I know that you know what this is but you can’t tell, okay, please don’t—”

Sana rests a gentle hand on her shoulder, and Eva swallows the rest of her pleas. “No one’s going to say anything, okay? You’ve drank alcohol in this house and all four of us have snuck out past curfew, why would this be any different?” She moves her hand to Eva’s hair, smoothing it down. It calms the buzzing under Eva’s skin, if only for a few moments.

“She’s been letting me listen to music, and teaching me to play the piano. I’m really good at it so far. That’s how we bonded, that’s what we fell in love over. Just like a film or something, you know, and...” Eva glances down at the song that’s held in her hands, so tightly the edges are crumpling. “This looks a hell of a lot like a goodbye.”

“Did she sound sick last night?” Sana asks, and Eva shakes her head. “Let’s just go to Isak’s, yeah? We can go over and see if she’s there, and you can talk to her.”

Eva swallows hard, nodding. She folds the song back up and tucks it into her pocket. “Let’s go, then. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on with my girlfriend. We don’t keep things from each other, so this must be serious if she’s keeping it from me.”

They throw on whatever clothes are at hand, brushing their teeth quickly and gathering their things. The bus ride to Isak’s is longer than normal, because time seems to be going slower and slower, inching by. Eva knows that a watched pot never boils, but she can’t help but watch the clock, watching the arms tick. It gives her something to do, at the very least.

When they do arrive, Eva is the first to run up to the door, pressing the doorbell. Eskild buzzes her up, and she practically sprints, taking two stairs at a time. Isak already has the door open for her, and eventually for her friends when they follow a few moments later, all panting and out of breath.

“We knew you’d show up,” Isak says, and Eva’s heart sinks further into her stomach. “Her room wasn’t cleared out, but there’s things missing. Clothes, some small things like pictures, some of her books, most of her shoes. It’s obvious that she took what she could and ran. I don’t know when, we just woke up to a goodbye note on the refrigerator and all of the missing shit. We figured she’d told you where she went, so we’ve been waiting for you to show up.” He licks his lips like he’s afraid to ask, but then puffs his chest and blurts, “Did she tell you where she went?”

All of the wind whooshes out of her lungs, and her body threatens to cave in on itself. She can feel herself trembling like a leaf in the wind, and it isn’t too far of a comparison to what she actually feels like. “No,” she whispers, and she watches Isak’s face fall. She imagines she looks pretty much the same, 3/4 destroyed and 1/4 scared out of her goddamn mind. “But I have an idea of where she might be.”

And that’s how they all end up on a tram to the woods. Eva tries not to think about how she sat here the first time, talking and gossiping with Noora like they didn’t live in a fucked up country where people can just go missing like this, where people have to hide their music for fear of prosecution.

Nobody talks about the music, but they all know. Chris, Sana, Vilde, Isak, Even, Eskild. They all know, they’d all seen the sheet music. But they don’t talk about it. Eva has the sneaking suspicion that Eskild had a sneaking suspicion about it, but she doesn’t ask. Those who don’t ask are those who aren’t lied to. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Something in Eva’s stomach is telling her that Noora isn’t at the house. She knows it from the moment they step off the tram and walk the short distance to the tree line. She knows it when they walk through the shrubbery on the ground. She knows it when they all climb up the rickety steps, and she knows it when she walks in and all of the candles are melted down to nothing and there’s not a single one lit.

When she crosses the room and pulls up the floorboard, it reveals only empty space. Her music is gone, her radio is gone, her blanket is gone. Everything is gone. Nothing is there to remind Eva that what happened there was real, that they bonded over the music, fell in love through it. All she has is candle wax dripped down dilapidated bookshelves and the faint smell of Noora’s perfume and—if she listens hard enough—the illusion of the sound of their laughter coming from the walls.

“Fuck,” Eva sobs, throwing down the candle she’d picked up, and watching it roll across the floorboards. “Where the hell did she go?! Why the hell would she just leave like that, without telling anyone anything?! Shit!” She spins and punches an already cracked mirror that’s been sitting there collecting dust since god knows when. Her knuckles split and bleed but Noora isn’t there to patch her up this time. It hurts more than it would if Noora was there to kiss it better.

There’s hands on her shoulders, someone spinning her around and pulling her into a hug. It takes her a moment to realize it’s Even, of all people. It’s unexpected, but Even is tall and warm and very huggable (and he smells like apples), so Eva lets herself melt into the embrace and cry into his shirt. Even doesn’t seem to mind the snot and the tears, just holds her.

There’s no group hugs. No cinema moments of them all crying together, mourning the loss of their friend. There’s no holding hands and oaths that they’ll uncover the truth no matter what it takes. This is the real world. This is a fucked up world and a fucked up government and seven teenagers standing in what probably used to be a crack house and an eighth teenager that thought it was easier to up and leave than to face whatever was trying to push her down. Eva wishes she was strong enough to say that she’d do differently, but she isn’t sure about that anymore. This is the real world, and Eva’s never been a force to reckon with.

It’s the last time she’ll ever be in that house, and it’s the last time she’ll see Noora for over a year.

  
♡♡♡

  
Part of Eva expects to see wanted posters up for Noora, but they never do. Missing posters show up everywhere for the first two months, and then they die down, and the investigation goes cold, and by the time it hits the four month anniversary, no one talks about Noora Amalie Sætre anymore. Not even Eva. Though it isn’t because she’s forgotten, or because she’s stopped caring. She just can’t put herself through the pain of talking about her all the time. Noora made the choice to leave, and Eva has to make the choice to be okay with that. For her own good.

It takes a while for life to get back to normal, but she manages. She doesn’t listen to music, mostly because she doesn’t have access to any, but she still plays piano. She practices on an old keyboard that doesn’t make any sound anymore, labeling the keys for a while but eventually removing the labels so she can play on her own. If her mum knows, she doesn’t say anything about it.

It’s in April of the next year—the year after Noora disappeared, just over a year after—that music becomes legal again. The president is overthrown and restrictions are lifted and a new, democratic government comes in. It’s the first time in a year that Eva hears good news and doesn’t immediately think of telling Noora, and when she realizes it, she cries in the bathroom at school.

A month later, Eva is set to play the piano at a school function. Nobody questions how Eva had mastered a piano when such activities were illegal, and Eva figures it’s because everyone knows it’s just better that way. No one likes to talk about the things that happened.

Though maybe they should, so it doesn’t happen again.

Eva doesn’t think on it. She just practices day and night, reading the green sheet music, running her fingers along the keys and singing along. She only sings when she’s alone because she’s absolute shit at it, but something about verbalizing the lyrics makes her feel like Noora is there with her. It makes her nostalgic sometimes. Eva should be over it, it’s been a year, but she’s not. She doesn’t know how anyone would ever be able to get over someone like Noora. Part of her doesn’t really want to.

After all, the chair in the back of her history class is now just a chair. (It’s not even her history class anymore.) The seat on the tram is now just a seat. The room in Eskild’s apartment is rented to someone else (only out of pure necessity). Isak’s room is even rented out, because he and Even had moved into their own apartment. The house in the woods is now just a house. And the place in Eva’s heart where Noora used to be will never become an empty cavity, she won’t let it. She won’t let herself be the next one to forget Noora.

  
♡♡♡

  
The night of the recital, Eva squeezes into her best red dress, and her friends rent a limo to arrive in, and Eva’s fingers don’t tremble around the lipstick tube she’s holding. She’s buzzed on legal champagne (probably not the best thing to do before a performance, but she’s positive it’ll wear off soon) and she’s surrounded by all of the people she loves most in the world.

“I can’t believe I actually get to do this,” she gushes to Sana as they sit backstage. She’s touching up her makeup as she speaks, glancing into the lit up mirrors. She feels like a pop star, like a celebrity. “All of my life I dreamed I’d get to hear music. And now I get to create it. There’s gotta be some poetic justice in that.”

Sana smiles, sitting down next to Eva. “We’re all really proud of you, you know. This time last year you were the lowest I’ve ever seen you, and now you’re...you’re doing this. You, Eva Kviig Mohn, are a fucking goddess.”

Eva throws her arms around her best friend’s shoulders, suppressing her smile into her hijab. Sana just laughs and hugs back. “I’m on top of the world right now, my dearest Sanasol.”

Sana pulls back. “Did Isak tell you to start calling me that?”

“Maybe,” Eva shrugs, dusting some blush onto the apples of her cheeks. “It’s a cute nickname, I like it.”

“Eva,” Sana warns, “do _not_ start calling me that.”

“Whatever you say, Sanasol.”

“Eva!”

“Eva!” Another voice interrupts, and both girls turn to see the orchestra director pointing to the grand piano nearby. “Rehearse now if you’re wanting to rehearse, okay? I have full faith that you’ll be a showstopper but it’s there if you need it. And we don’t have much time left. And Sana, dear, I love you, but I’m going to need you to head to the audience.”

Sana nods. “No problem.” She turns back to Eva, gently cupping her cheek and smiling. Eva blushes under the affection. “You’ll kill it out there, Eva. I’m so, so proud of you. Good luck.” She smiles again and then follows the director out. Eva finishes applying her makeup and then moves over to the grand piano, smoothing out her sheet music (she hardly needs it, she knows the song by heart), and prepared to play.

The backstage is pretty quiet, all things considered. There’s nobody singing yet, nobody strumming a guitar. She hears the faint sound of tap shoes, but it’s distant enough to not be a bother. Eva cracks her knuckles and then cracks her neck, and settles her fingers on the keys.

She gets the first few chords out, gets distracted, fucks up. Tries again. Gets distracted, fucks up. It’s a cycle. She keeps messing up, and she can’t figure out why. It gets to the point where Eva’s ready to give up, ready to close the piano and walk out.

She doesn’t. She gives it another shot.

After the first few chords, she hears someone behind her start singing. “Hold me close and hold me fast, this _magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose. When you kiss me, heaven sighs. And though I close my eyes, I see la vie en rose_.”

Eva gasps, her fingers pausing on the keys as she snaps her head up to see who’d come over. She knows that voice anywhere, and it’s the voice of the only other person in the world who knows the lyrics to this song, the song that Eva had been given by the first girl she’s ever fallen in love with. The only girl she’s ever fallen in love with  

“Noora,” Eva breathes out, and her eyes start to water.

Noora’s standing there, just inside the doorway, draped in a dark coat and skinny jeans. Her nose is pierced now, and she’s a little bit taller, and her hair is shorter and wavy. She looks fucking amazing, skin tanned from the sunlight in Rome. Eva can practically smell the flowers, can hear the Italian music from just looking at Noora. She’s always known that Noora held the world within her.

“Keep playing,” Noora says gently. There’s tears in her voice, too. And some apprehension, like she’s scared that Eva will be upset. “My singing was helping you. Keep playing until you get it, okay, baby?”

Eva’s heart flutters, and she chokes out a sob, but she obeys. Her hands return to the keys, and she starts the song over again. And it turns out that Noora is right. The reason that Eva couldn’t play it before is because she’d grown so used to singing along with it, that the lack of lyrics had messed her up.

“ _Hold me close and hold me fast, this magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose_ ,” Noora sings as Eva plays. Her voice is just as beautiful (more so) than Eva had imagined before, and it makes her throat close. “ _When you kiss me, heaven sighs. And though I close my eyes, this is la vie en rose._

“ _When you press me to your heart, I’m in a world apart, a world where roses bloom. And when you speak, angels sing from above. Everyday words seem to turn into love songs. Give your heart and soul to me, and life will always be la vie en rose_.”

They go through it four times before they perfect it, their timing on point and Eva’s tears slowed. Noora claps slowly, but Eva doesn’t think about it. She just spins on the bench and looks at Noora for the first time in a year.

“Where the hell did you go?!” Eva demands, though she already knows the answer.

“Rome.”

“Why?!”

“Because it wasn’t safe for me here,” Noora admits. She’s wringing her hands, a telltale sign that she’s nervous. Eva knows this about her because she fucking knows Noora, was in love with her, _is_ in love with her, and she’s so fucking angry that Noora would just leave like that. “People were getting suspicious, Eva. I wasn’t going to stand by and wait for them to catch me.”

Eva stands now, crossing the room. Noora stands up straighter, but Eva can tell it’s more out of self defense than intimidation. “And you just left, without telling anyone? Not even me, your girlfriend? The person you supposedly loved and adored and cared about?! You just left me to deal with your disappearance without any explanation, without any knowledge of you were okay or anything?! That’s so fucking selfish,” she snaps. Noora just looks down at her shoes, and Eva clenched her fists.

“I didn’t want to drag you into it. It was dangerous, and I wanted to keep you safe. And besides,” Noora pauses, reaching to take Eva’s hand, “I did ask you to go with me. That night at Sana’s, I asked you to run away with me.”

Eva rips her hand away. “Bullshit! I was half asleep and confused and you didn’t tell me anything! For all I knew, that was a fucking dream.”

“I know I fucked up, Eva, and I’m sorry. I really am. But I was in danger, okay? I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave Oslo, I didn’t want to leave you, I didn’t—” Noora chokes on her words, pressing her hand to her mouth as she tries to gain control of her emotions. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, okay? I love you so much, I always have. That hasn’t changed. I was scared and I ran to protect myself and to protect you. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“My choice was to stay here and risk going to prison, or to go to Rome and pray that they didn’t send people after me,” Noora snaps. Eva can tell that her patience is wearing thin and fuck, Eva’s is too. “What would you have chosen?”

Eva’s bottom lip trembles, and she doesn’t know what comes over her, but the next thing she knows she burying her face in Noora’s chest and trying her best not to cry for fear of ruining her stage makeup. Noora holds her, rubs her back and runs her fingers through her hair, and tries not to cry too.

“I love you,” Eva sobs, clinging tightly to the back of Noora’s coat. She’s worried that Noora will slip through her fingertips again if she lets go, even for a second. “I missed you so much, fuck, please don’t ever leave me again.”

“I never meant to leave you, baby. I never meant to leave you, I’m so sorry,” Noora whispers, clinging just as tightly to Eva.

“Okay, as sweet as this is,” the director’s voice cuts in, “Eva’s due on stage in three. Get yourself together, and fix your eyeliner before it runs. We have a show to put on!”

Eva and Noora split up, wiping their eyes and smiling at each other like it’s one year ago and they just finished dancing to a particularly sappy slow song. Eva can imagine it is that, if she tries hard enough.

“Sing on stage with me,” Eva says, lacing her fingers with Noora’s. “Please. I can’t do this without you.”

“Eva—”

“Noora, it’s your song. Please come up there and sing with me.”

“You were gonna do it without me before—”

“That was then, and this is now,” Eva interrupts. She reaches to cup Noora’s cheeks, wiping at the few bits of running mascara. “You love music just as much as I do, and you deserve to be up there just as much as I do. You taught me everything you know. I literally would not be here without you, could not be here without you. We’re in this together.”

Noora leans into Eva’s touch. “That’s your spotlight, baby.”

“I wouldn’t have that spotlight without you. I want to share it with you.”

“I’m scared,” Noora admits, and Eva inches closer, presses their noses together. “Playing in front of my crush was hard enough,” she teases, and Eva giggles, pressing their lips together briefly, “and playing to hundreds? Thousands? I can’t do that. That’s terrifying.”

Eva just shrugs. “Better a little pain now than a lot of pain later, right?”

Noora groans, pulling away from Eva only to push right back in. Eva smiles. “Using my own words against me! That’s not fair, how Can I say no to that? Especially with you giving me those eyes?”

“You can’t,” Eva smiles. “That’s the whole point.”

“Eva! You’re on in thirty seconds, let’s go!” The director yells, and three men rush In to take the grand piano out to center stage.

Eva turns back to Noora. “Come on, Noora. Sing with me. What’ve you got to lose?”

Noora presses her lips together, and then sighs heavily, and Eva knows she’s won. “Fine, fine. I’ll sing with you. Come on, then. We don’t want to keep your adoring fans waiting.” They walk to the grand piano, and as Eva sits down at the bench, Noora takes a seat on the lid, accepting the microphone the director offers her. “Just know that I’m always your number one fan,” Noora adds in, and Eva smiles just as the curtain rises and the sounds of applause cover up anything that Eva wants to say. It’s okay, though. Noora already knows them.

They have a lot to talk about, Eva knows that. Noora running away isn’t something that can be fixed by a couple of kisses backstage. It’s a big issue, one that caused wounds that’ll take some time to heal. And Eva knows it’s possible that they might never go back to the way things were, but she doesn’t really care. If there’s one thing she’s learned from the government previous, it’s that sometimes change can be the best thing that ever happened to her.

Eva’s always known that Noora Amalie Sætre holds the world’s wonders in the palms of her hands like liquid gold. And Noora’s chosen to share it with her. Eva would be an idiot to take it for granted.

There’s a lot to talk about, but not right now.

Right now, Eva just lays her fingers on the keys, and gently presses down.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @femmevilde
> 
> songs used:
> 
> i need my girl by the national  
> like a virgin by madonna  
> more than words by extreme  
> la vie en rose in the style of daniela andrade


End file.
